Isegoria

Having spent four thousand turbulent years consolidating its landmass, Tim Marshall explains (in Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World), China is now building a blue-water navy:

A green-water navy patrols its maritime borders, a blue-water navy patrols the oceans. It will take another thirty years (assuming economic progression) for China to build naval capacity to seriously challenge the most powerful seaborne force the world has ever seen — the US Navy. But in the medium to short term, as it builds, and trains, and learns, the Chinese navy will bump up against its rivals in the seas; and how those bumps are managed — especially the Sino-American ones — will define great power politics in this century.

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As some of the richer Arab nations came to realize, you cannot buy an efficient military off the shelf.

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Gradually the Chinese will put more and more vessels into the seas off their coast and into the Pacific. Each time one is launched there will be less space for the Americans in the China seas. The Americans know this, and know the Chinese are working toward a land-based antiship missile system to double the reasons why the US Navy, or any of its allies, might one day want to think hard about sailing through the South China Sea. Or indeed, any other “China sea.” China’s increasing long distance-shore-to ship artillery firepower will free up its growing navy to venture farther from its coastline because the navy will be become less vital for defense. There was hint of this in September 2015 when the Chinese (lawfully) sailed five vessels through American territorial waters off the coast of Alaska. That this took place just before President Xi’s visit to the United States was not a coincidence. The Bering Strait is the quickest way for Chinese vessels to reach the Arctic Ocean. We will see more of them off the Alaskan coast in the coming years. And all the while, the developing Chinese space project will be watching every move the Americans make, and those of its allies.

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Under the water China is playing catch-up in submarine warfare. It may be able to surface a sub next to a US carrier group, but its underwater fleet is too noisy to hunt enemy submarines. While it works on this problem it is deploying anti-submarine ships and is busy installing a network of underwater sensors in the East and South China Seas.

Between China and the Pacific is the archipelago that Beijing calls the “first island chain.” There is also the “nine-dash line,” more recently turned into ten dashes in 2013 to include Taiwan, which China says marks its territory. This dispute over ownership of more than two hundred tiny islands and reefs is poisoning China’s relations with its neighbors. National pride means China wants to control the passageways through the chain; geopolitics dictates it has to. It provides access to the world’s most important shipping lanes in the South China Sea. In peacetime the route is open in various places, but in wartime it could very easily be blocked, thus blockading China. All great nations spend peacetime preparing for the day war breaks out.

Free access to the Pacific is first hindered by Japan. Chinese vessels emerging from the Yellow Sea and rounding the Korean Peninsula would have to go through the Sea of Japan and up through La Perouse Strait above Hokkaido and into the Pacific. Much of this is Japanese or Russian territorial waters, and at a time of great tension, or even hostilities, would be inaccessible to China. Even if they made it they would still have to navigate through the Kuril Islands northeast of Hokkaido, which are controlled by Russia but claimed by Japan.

Japan is also in dispute with China over the uninhabited island chain it calls Senkaku and the Chinese know as Diaoyu, northeast of Taiwan. This is the most contentious of all territorial claims between the two countries. If instead Chinese ships pass through, or indeed set off from, the East China Sea off Shanghai and go in a straight line toward the Pacific, they must pass the Ryukyu Islands, which include Okinawa—upon which there is not only a huge American military base, but also as many shore-to-ship missiles as the Japanese can pile at the tip of the island. The message from Tokyo is: “We know you’re going out there, but don’t mess with us on the way out.”

Another potential flare-up with Japan centers on the East China Sea’s gas deposits. Beijing has declared an “Air Defense Identification Zone” over most of the sea, requiring prior notice before anyone else flies through it. The Americans and Japanese are trying to ignore it, but it will become a hot issue at a time of their choosing or due to an accident that is mismanaged.

Below Okinawa is Taiwan, which sits off the Chinese coast and separates the East China Sea from the South China Sea. China claims Taiwan as its twenty-third province, but it is currently an American ally with a navy and air force armed to the teeth by Washington. It came under Chinese control in the seventeenth century but has only been ruled by China for five years in the last century (from 1945 to 1949).

Taiwan’s official name is the Republic of China (ROC) to differentiate it from the People’s Republic of China, although the ROC claims it should govern both territories. This is a name Beijing can live with, as it does not state that Taiwan is a separate state. America is committed to defending Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion under the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979. However, if Taiwan declares full independence from China, which China would consider an act of war, the United States is not to come to its rescue, as the declaration would be considered provocative.

The two governments vie for recognition for themselves and nonrecognition of the other in every single country in the world, and in most cases Beijing wins. When you can offer a potential market of 1.4 billion people as opposed to 23 million, most countries don’t need long to consider. However, there are twenty-two countries (mostly developing states; for example, Swaziland, Burkina Faso, and the island nation of São Tomé and Principe) that do opt for Taiwan and that are usually handsomely rewarded.

The Chinese are determined to have Taiwan but are nowhere near being able to challenge for it militarily. Instead they are using soft power by increasing trade and tourism between the two states. China wants to woo Taiwan back into its arms. During the 2014 student protests in Hong Kong, one of the reasons the authorities did not quickly batter them off the streets — as they would have done in, for example, Ürümqi — was that the world’s cameras were there and would have captured the violence. In China much of this footage would be blocked, but in Taiwan people would see what the rest of the world saw and ask themselves how close a relationship they wanted with such a power. Beijing hesitated; it is playing the long game.

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To go westward toward the energy-producing states of the Gulf they must pass Vietnam, which as we have noted has recently been making overtures to the Americans. They must go near the Philippines, a US ally, before trying to get through the Strait of Malacca between Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia, all of which are diplomatically and militarily linked to the United States. The strait is approximately five hundred miles long and at its narrowest point is less than two miles wide. It has always been a choke point—and the Chinese remain vulnerable to being choked, which is why by the fall of 2016 the Chinese were nearing the completion of extending the capacity of the port in Gwadar, Pakistan, and linking it by highway to China. All of the states along the strait, and near its approaches, are anxious about Chinese dominance and most have territorial disputes with Beijing.

China claims almost the entire South China Sea, and the energy supplies believed to be beneath it, as its own. However, Malaysia, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Brunei also have territorial claims against China and one another. For example, the Philippines and China argue bitterly over the Mischief Islands, a large reef in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, which one day could live up to their name. Every one of the hundreds of disputed atolls, and sometimes just rocks poking out of the water, could be turned into a diplomatic crisis, as surrounding each rock is a potential dispute about fishing zones, exploration rights, and sovereignty.

To further these aims, China, using dredging and land reclamations methods, has embarked on turning a series of reefs and atolls in disputed territory into islands. For example, one, whose name, Fiery Cross Reef, described what it was, has been turned into an island complete with port and runway in the Spratly Islands. Another has had artillery units stationed on it. The runway could host fighter jets giving China far more control of the skies over the region than it currently has.

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It cannot afford to be blockaded. Diplomacy is one solution; the ever-growing navy is another; but the best guarantees are pipelines, roads, and ports.

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The geopolitical writer Robert D. Kaplan expounds the theory that the South China Sea is to the Chinese in the twenty-first century what the Caribbean was to the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Americans, having consolidated their landmass, had become a two-ocean power (Atlantic and Pacific), and then moved to control the seas around them, pushing the Spanish out of Cuba.

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Its lease on the new deep-water port at Gwadar in Pakistan will (if the Pakistan region of Baluchistan is stable enough) be key to creating an alternative land route up to China. From Burma’s west coastline, China has built natural gas and oil pipelines linking the Bay of Bengal up into southwest China — China’s way of reducing its nervous reliance on the Strait of Malacca, through which almost 80 percent of its energy supplies pass. This partially explains why, when the Burmese junta began to slowly open up to the outside world in 2010, it wasn’t just the Chinese who beat a path to their door. The Americans and Japanese were quick to establish better relations, with both President Obama and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan going to pay their respects in person.

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The Chinese are also building ports in Kenya, railroad lines in Angola, and a hydroelectric dam in Ethiopia. They are scouring the length and breadth of the whole of Africa for minerals and precious metals.

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China will not leave the sea-lanes in its neighborhood to be policed by the Americans.

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